Room for Quiet Diplomacy

When Henry Kissinger set out from Washington three weeks ago on an extended 17-day trip to 15 nations, his itinerary was a mixture of must calls and maybes. The Secretary of State's official visits definitely included Moscow, for discussions on detente; New Delhi, for conciliatory talks with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; and Rome, for the World Food Conference (see page 42). The Middle East was among the maybes.

In the wake of the Arab summit at Rabat, events had moved far enough and fast enough that Kissinger was forced to revise the flight schedule. As his blue-and-white Air Force 707 lifted off from Rome for Cairo last week, newsmen traveling with Kissinger were told by State Department officials that his calls at the Egyptian capital, and at Riyadh, Amman, Damascus and Jerusalem, were "working visits" rather than "official visits"--the description of previous stops on his aerial caravan.

Big Problem. The explanation for Kissinger's Middle Eastern visits was not just a semantic nicety: the Secretary had indeed a lot of work to accomplish before returning to Washington. Essentially, he needed to find out whether or not his hopes for a continuation of gradual, bilateral negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors had been dashed by the Rabat summit. There, the leaders of the Arab world had shunted Jordan's King Hussein aside and declared that the Palestine Liberation Organization (TIME cover, Nov. 11) had their backing to set up an "independent national authority" on any occupied Palestinian territory that Israel gives up. The big problem was that both Kissinger and the Israelis had hoped that any negotiation deal on the West Bank would involve Jordan; moreover, Israel adamantly refused to negotiate in any way with the P.L.O.

Arriving in Cairo, Kissinger admitted that the Rabat summit's endorsement of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat had "complicated matters." As it happened, Arafat was also in the Egyptian capital, to discuss his forthcoming visit to the U.N. with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Kissinger refused to admit the possibility that he and the fedayeen leader might confer face to face. "We'd be crazy to switch our signals and push the Israelis into dealing with Arafat now," said a U.S. official.

The customary hospitality was ready when Kissinger's 707 landed in Cairo. President Sadat extended a graceful welcome to "my friend Dr. Kissinger." Ailing with influenza, Sadat had risen from a sickbed to greet the Secretary, and his words could scarcely be heard at a press conference following their discussions at Giza Residence.

Egyptian diplomats insisted that Sadat's basic position had not changed as a result of Rabat. He is still prepared to carry on bilateral negotiations with Israel toward a second stage of troop withdrawals from the Sinai. In return, Cairo may be willing to let Israeli cargoes go through the Suez Canal when it reopens next year and may allow the resumption of commercial flights between the two countries by third-party airlines. On the other hand, Sadat insisted that there can be meaningful progress in talks with Israel only if there is simultaneous progress on other fronts as well--meaning some kind of solution to the Palestinian problem and a settlement of Israel's dispute with Syria over the Golan Heights.

Although Sadat formally endorsed Kissinger's approach to step-by-step negotiations--as did Saudi Arabia's King Faisal when the Secretary visited Riyadh--there was less enthusiasm for the American diplomat than there had been on his previous visits to Cairo. He was the butt of some rather pointed Egyptian satire. The weekly newspaper Rose el Youssef depicted Kissinger in a cartoon as a Pied Piper at the head of a band of youthful Arabs. "We listen to him," said one of the band, "but we choose our own path!" The Cairo daily Al Ahram had a cartoon of Kissinger studying the skyline of Cairo, which included a new high-rise labeled "Palestinian state." "If they insist on changing the landmarks," Kissinger complained in the caption, "I'm likely to lose my way."

New Reality. If this was a subtle change in attitude toward Kissinger, the obvious explanation was that the Rabat summit had altered the Arab priorities toward negotiations. Until Kissinger can smooth the way, neither Egypt nor any other Arab nation is anxious to get too far out in front with the Secretary. Moreover, the Arabs were also waiting to see what the election of a heavily Democratic--and, by inference, pro-Israel--Congress might do to Middle East negotiations.

Kissinger had hoped to delay negotiations over the West Bank until after Israeli-Egyptian talks were well under way. But King Hussein, who still bridled over his treatment at Rabat, forced the issue. "A new reality exists," he announced in Amman, "and Jordan must adjust to it." The King thereby began a "Jordanization of Jordan." He called an emergency session of Parliament to debate constitutional articles that would allow for a division of his kingdom. He also pressed the 900,000 Palestinians living on the East Bank to decide whether they wanted Palestinian or Jordanian citizenship. Hussein hinted that he might remove Palestinians from his Cabinet, which is heavily weighted with them. Any such action will probably wait on a joint negotiating strategy conference, proposed at Rabat, involving Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the P.L.O.

Disgruntled Mood. Hussein's disgruntled mood was not helped by some antimonarchic acts apparently inspired by Rabat. A group of Jordanians describing themselves as members of a "Free Officers Movement" skyjacked a Royal Jordanian Airlines jet and forced it to land in Libya. The King is also being guarded against possible attacks by a band of Palestinian assassins, 14 of whom were grabbed at Rabat and accused of plotting to kill him.

Hussein's moves complicated matters not only for Kissinger but also for Israel, which still hopes to deal with the King over disposition of the West Bank. Premier Yitzhak Rabin appeared before the Knesset last week for a debate on Israel's Middle East policy. He insisted that "the Palestinian issue can and must be solved," but added that Israel would negotiate "with Jordan and no one else. We shall not allow the emissaries of terror to gain a foothold of terror among the people of the West Bank."

Rabin's Labor-dominated coalition government easily won a confidence vote, 63 to 42; to demonstrate the Premier's intent, Israeli police moved into the West Bank to arrest and deport four Arafat sympathizers, including Arab Editor Ali Khatib, 54. At the same time, Israeli forces carried out a helicopter raid into Lebanon; they captured the headman of a village reportedly sympathetic to the fedayeen and took him back to Israel for interrogation.

Israeli intransigence about negotiating with Palestinian terrorists was shaken two weeks ago by a White House miscue: President Ford appeared to hint that as a result of the Rabat summit Israel might have to deal with King Hussein and the P.L.O. Arriving in Jerusalem last week, Kissinger had to reassure Rabin at the outset of their talks that the U.S. still considered it possible to discuss the future of the West Bank with Hussein. The Secretary also told the Israelis that in his view the Arabs, despite the summit, had left themselves an encouraging amount of room for continued negotiations. Any progress toward peace, however, was likely to be slower and more cautious. "We're past the home run hitting stage in the Middle East," one member of Kissinger's party explained. The metaphor might have been lost on Israeli listeners, but the emphasis on "quiet diplomacy" was clear.

Before returning to Washington, Kissinger had planned to fly from Israel to Turkey to discuss a proposed compromise plan on the Cyprus impasse with Premier Buelent Ecevit. At the last minute, the Ankara trip had to be canceled. Unable to form a new coalition government because of disagreements over Cyprus, Ecevit announced that he could not hold "serious" talks with the Secretary of State.

Small Token. Even without that side trip, Kissinger's journey was an exhausting one. Besides trying to restore momentum to Middle East negotiations, he had talked about oil prices with the Shah of Iran and King Faisal (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS) and had discussed East-West relations with Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest and aging Josip Broz Tito, now 82, in Belgrade, as well as with Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. As a small token of the Soviet party chiefs hopes for a happy Vladivostok summit meeting with Gerald Ford later this month, the Russians last week allowed Lithuanian Sailor Simas Kudirka, 44, and his family to fly to the U.S. Kudirka attracted world attention four years ago when he leaped aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter from a Russian fishing trawler in American coastal waters, seeking political asylum. He was beaten and dragged back aboard the trawler while embarrassed U.S. crewmen looked on. Kudirka, who claims U.S. citizenship through his Brooklyn-born mother, was released in direct response to a message from Ford to Brezhnev.

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